Originally Posted by
Tonymitsu
Rules As Intended are author recommendations for how a DM should rule in his game when encountering an actual ambiguity, or text that is otherwise unclear. It is something invoked during a game whenever you have text that does not otherwise clearly indicate author intent.
*snip*
The concept of Rules As Written vs. Rules As Intended is not, and was never meant to be, license to ignore context and invent your own interpretations for text in which intent is blatantly obvious, but specific words and phrases that forbid alternate interpretations are not present. If you have ten tables attempting to interpret the 3.5 ruleset using rules technicalities, you will have ten tables playing ten entirely different games.
Even if such technicalities have their place in the theoretical, they are not useful constructs for the purposes of optimization. For reasons which at this point, I hope, are abundantly clear.